


Love Letters for the 21st Century

by TheWhiteLily



Series: Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2016 [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bromance, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Gen, M/M, Oh Sherlock., POV Sherlock Holmes, Possibly Pre-Slash, Reichenbach Angst, Sherlock Holmes is Bad at Feelings, Unreliable Narrator, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 09:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7527562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWhiteLily/pseuds/TheWhiteLily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John’s expressed the same thought in every possible variant available to the English language.  (Or: Sherlock muses on the meaning of John's blog.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Letters for the 21st Century

**Author's Note:**

> For Watsons's Woes prompt for July 18th: _And with this pen, I thee wed / From my heart to your distress_ (from “Handwritten” by The Gaslight Anthem)

Sherlock had always assumed that it would die down, after a while.

It had to, surely.  John wasn’t gay.  He didn’t _want_ anything out of Sherlock.  He wasn’t attempting to ingratiate himself to extract Sherlock’s services or buy his silence.  The novelty had worn off, the shock that was common to every initial reaction to Sherlock’s observations was gone.  It had to stop _sometime_.

Sherlock was used to all sorts of responses when he gave up on keeping his mind penned up behind his lips and let his deductions out.

Civilians tended to try the old classic “Piss off,” or one if its variants.  Some were angrier than that, of course, threatening or trying to bribe him into maintaining the confidentiality of their tawdry secrets.  As though he cared.  Some who _hadn’t_ previously known the truths he’d let spill out reverted to shocked tears and hurt retorts, clutching their meaningless illusions as a shield against the obvious reality he’d unveiled.  Occasionally there were claims to have known all along, that they’d seen and assembled the evidence Sherlock had pointed out to them long ago.  

Police more often than not responded with affronted indignation and accusations of inventing things, wasting their ever-so-precious time.  Dominance behaviours: name-calling, useless posturing or fake drugs busts, in an attempt to reassert control over the things beyond their simplistic comprehension.

Given John’s military history, short stature and obvious intellectual mediocrity, Sherlock would have rated him at least a forty percent chance of falling into that category.

There was Mycroft’s smug condescension and correction, of course, which was always an outside chance even if Sherlock had never met anyone else before Moriarty who could do the same.  He’d lived in hope for so many years of finding someone—someone who wasn’t _Mycroft_ , obviously—someone like Sherlock, someone who understood what it was to see _everything,_ and care about nothing.  And yet….

And yet.

He’d never met _anyone_ who reacted quite like John.

Who listened, quietly and credulously.  Probed for clarification, sought to understand, and then marvelled at him, publicly, wholeheartedly and unselfconsciously.  And yet...

Eventually he couldn’t be startled by Sherlock’s deductions anymore. Even laboratory mice acclimatised to repeated stimulus eventually.

Sherlock had assumed that would have to be the end of it, but instead John started pre-empting him, looking towards him in expectation, eagerly anticipating the outpouring of deductive insight in the certain hope of being amazed.  He responded to even the simplest, most obvious of Sherlock’s deductions with pure admiration, time and time again—and not just verbally in the moment, but in writing.  He eulogised Sherlock constantly on his blog, and the clatter of keys from across the room as he wrote were an unignorable distraction.  Sherlock could always _tell_ when John was writing about him.  He was writing a _lot_.

Sherlock hated the blog.  Hated John’s romanticised, stripped down accounts of his brilliance reduced to adjectives and exclamation marks instead of the cold, observable fact and clear logical inference which would snap everything into obvious focus.

He hated the blog.  And yet… and yet he _read_ it.  Time and time again, he would read John’s entries, drinking in the glowing words used so freely and reverently, words made physical and permanent and public—and thus perhaps more intimate than any handwritten letter.

He hated the blog, where John described his missteps in even greater detail than his triumphs.  And yet he was transfixed at the overwhelming image of himself as seen through John’s eyes, seen in a way no one else ever had.

Everyone who read it thought that John was in love with him.

When Sherlock read it, his mind palace automatically filling out bare words with the impressions of John’s voice and mannerisms and little habits of typing, the memories of the moments John had chosen to inaccurately recount, Sherlock half-believed it, too.

Sherlock experimented, of course, like he experimented with everything.  Although in this case, perhaps it was more like a child incessantly poking at a wobbly tooth, testing how far it would go before it eventually—maybe not today, but soon—eventually, _inevitably_ popped out.  As it would always have to, no matter how gently it was treated.

He disappointed John.  Mostly with his lack of tact, when he made Molly cry, or failed to live up to John’s romantic illusions about his motivations, but that could hardly be helped.  Enraged him, with careless experimentation that destroyed his property or contaminated his breakfast.  Neglected him, dragging him along behind without sleep or food or the chance to keep dates with his faceless female companions.  He was himself, had never tried to hide it.

And yet… it didn’t seem to make any _difference_.  Not to John.

The next blog entry would come out, full of effusive delight and self-effacing wonder, cut with a mild irritation at Sherlock’s more antisocial habits, the habits that had always driven others to run and keep on running.  Love letters, that kept on coming.

Still, it couldn’t last forever.

When Sherlock met Moriarty at last, it was a thrilling diversion from the quieter puzzle who shared his flat.  The surprise of finding out (very briefly) that the darker half of himself was also _John_ seemed almost inevitable once he’d found out: a satisfying explanation of two puzzles in one.

Disappointing, perhaps, when John opened his parka and the illusion dropped.

Perhaps something else.  Something far more terrible than that.  

Apparently having an archenemy—not _Mycroft_ , Mycroft didn't count anymore—someone _else_ like Sherlock, who understood what it was to see _everything,_ and care about nothing….  Well, apparently Moriarty was going to be less like Sherlock than Sherlock had assumed, because Sherlock wasn't having fun anymore.

And when he finally stood on the rooftop at the denouement of Moriarty’s story, giving the performance of his lifetime—a performance _for_ John’s lifetime—Sherlock knew that this was the end.  There was only one way left to get down.

This time, there would be no next blog entry.  No balm of brilliance Sherlock could apply to John’s wounds to astonish and enchant him into forgetting his anger.

Sherlock couldn’t be here anymore; he needed to disassemble Moriarty’s network, needed to go underground quickly and completely.  Couldn’t have John tagging along behind him as though they’d never managed to get the handcuffs off, needing food and sleep and contact with other people.  It was going to be hard enough staying hidden with only himself, as solitary and uncaring of hardship as he was.  And everything would be easier the less questions there were.

So he pushed, and pushed hard.  He retold Moriarty’s story for John—the only story that would make sense of it all for him, as Moriarty had planned, laid out the perfect deduction that pulled together all the facts in evidence one last time.

In his mind palace, a bundle of handwritten letters tied with a ribbon began to smoulder, the edges curling and blackening.

All lives end.  All hearts are broken.  Or burned out.

But John’s didn’t have to be, not by the absence of someone who’d never existed.

Afterwards, Sherlock laid low at Molly’s for a few weeks, waiting, needing the furore to die down a little before he risked moving through a transport hub, but also… not ready.  He ventured out, merged with the homeless in the city, and watched the lives he’d saved go on without him.  

Lestrade, suspended from work and taking up smoking again.  Mrs Hudson, fluttering with grief but carrying on.  John, so shell-shocked that he’d gone to stay with his sister, barely coping with the despair of having been so entirely deceived in a man he’d thought his friend.

Hopefully that would be short lived.  Harry was an entirely unsuitable flatmate for John’s needs.

And then came the day when John came out of his psychologist’s office, his jaw tight with anger bleeding into bleak determination.  A phone call that evening.  A cab in the morning directed to Baker Street, and Sherlock could see, _knew exactly_ where John was heading…

Sherlock beat him there.  He had to be there for this.

Something inside him was still clinging to London, despite knowing where he needed to be.  Distracting Sherlock from his task, his _purpose_.  John wasn’t the only one who needed closure: Sherlock needed to hear the words, to hear John’s condemnation and private rage, the assertion that he’d always suspected deep down.  The tears and hurt accusations at the shattering of his illusions.

After John had said his piece at Sherlock's grave, he would go home and delete his blog.  Reassert his own control, rewriting their past by erasing every word he’d ever wasted on imagining that Sherlock was something greater than he truly was.

It would be over, at last.  No more waiting for the wobbly tooth that didn't fit to finally fall out.

He hadn’t taken a copy of John’s blog the previous night.

It had taken him five attempts _not_ to take a copy, and eventually he’d had to distract himself with an experiment on the physical evidence left by bathtub electrocution, using Molly’s laptop and shorting out the entire building.  But he _hadn’t_ taken a copy.

When it was gone, there would be no point in keeping the letters anymore.

“I’m angry,” John told Mrs Hudson, and Sherlock braced himself.  This was it.

And yet….

And yet John surprised him, once again.  Apparently, he wasn’t _that_ angry.  No one would ever convince him, he claimed, that Sherlock had ever told him a lie.

Which was clearly logically inconsistent, given that Sherlock had _told_ him he’d been lying, and thus he had to have lied at _least_ once, not to mention the dozen or so other times which came to mind where he’d pushed and manipulated John to where he was needed to solve the case and yet….

And yet.

One more miracle, he asked, as though he expected Sherlock to be able to rise up out of the ground, right then and there.  As though he really did believe that Sherlock could do _anything_.  As though John wasn’t a miracle, in himself.  Perhaps there would be nothing Sherlock could do to _ever_ induce John to say, “Piss off.”  

Sherlock tugged his coat tighter around him, armour for his aching heart, and turned away.

His flight for Cairo would be taking off in less than two hours.  There were things he needed to do first, if he was ever going to make it home.

Perhaps it hadn’t been the clean break he was looking for, but it was motivation nonetheless.

 _Yes, John_ , he sent silently after the man helping Mrs Hudson into a cab.   _For you, one more miracle._

When Sherlock came back, John was going to be _amazed_.

And in the meantime, his blog would stay unretracted, stay online as a public declaration of John’s faith—perhaps even his love—whenever Sherlock needed to leaf through the carefully written bundle of letters.  A reminder of just what he had waiting for him back home.  

And who.


End file.
